As a reminder, my research topic involves accessibility in regard to web design. My focus is on how accessibility is prioritized and why it is important. I started out with questions that were too specific and have had to generalize a bit.

I have been struggling with finding enough relevant information, so I decided to switch up my process for this week. In previous weeks I would go straight to the informatics database, but this time I did a general search in the Forsyth Library just to see what would come up. I wanted to exhaust all that I could before switching up my research as a last resort.

I searched “web design accessibility”, restricted to a publication date between 2000-2023, full-text, peer-reviewed, and articles, web sites, people with disabilities, and web site development as search criteria. This turned up a significant number of results (over 2,000). Even though there are too many results to sort through, I stuck with this because the two results that showed at the very top that, at first glance, seem like they will be helpful. For the first article (Godwin-Jones, 2001), I was led to the Gale Academic Onefile database.

SUBJECT TERMS SEARCH

The subject terms related to above mentioned article didn’t seem very helpful, but I chose to try the “Web site design” subject term. This led to 949 results. I narrowed the search to include peer-reviewed articles which brought the results down to 343. In order to chip away further, I revised the search terms and added a Boolean search. My full search was then “Web site design” AND “accessibility.” Full text and peer-reviewed were still filtered. This led to 19 results and produced some promising finds that all seemed to be related to my research.

One source that caught my attention was a study done in 2018 of private sector websites and how well they adhere to accessibility standards set in various federal statutes (McDonald et al., 2018).

CITATION TRACING

Looking through the references of that article proved a bit more frustrating. Some references seemed promising but I was either unable to look it up or the reference was to an article that I would have to buy. I did however find one really good new source that talks specifically about the Americans with Disabilities Act and how that applies to websites (Podlas, 2015).

REFERENCES

Godwin-Jones, B. (2001). EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES — Accessibility and Web Design : Why Does It Matter? Language, Learning & Technology, 5(1), 11. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A72805510/AONE?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=afa42c26

McDonald, D., Goette, T., & Petoia, H. (2018). Gauging ADA Compliance in the 21st Century Business Internet: A Pilot Study. Communications of the IIMA, 16(4), COV1+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A629499426/AONE?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=b33da804

Podlas, K. (2015). WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY AND THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES         ACT. Journal of Internet Law, 19(5), 3-16. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/website-accessibility-americans-with-disabilities/docview/1733872456/se-2?accountid=27424